UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by the Official Charts Company, on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-selling singles in the United Kingdom, based upon physical sales, paid-for downloads and streaming. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and MTV, is the UK music industry's recognised official measure of singles and albums popularity because it is the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, today surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital services daily, capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain across the week, over 98% of albums. To be eligible for the chart, a single is defined by the Official Charts Company as either a'single bundle' having no more than four tracks and not lasting longer than 25 minutes or one digital audio track not longer than 15 minutes with a minimum sale price of 40 pence; the rules have changed many times as technology has developed, the most notable being the inclusion of digital downloads in 2005 and streaming in July 2014.
The OCC website contains the Top 100 chart. Some media outlets only list the Top 75 of this list; the chart week runs from 00:01 Friday to midnight Thursday, with most UK physical and digital singles being released on Fridays. From 3 August 1969 until 5 July 2015, the chart week ran from 00:01 Sunday to midnight Saturday; the Top 40 chart is first issued on Friday afternoons by BBC Radio 1 as The Official Chart from 16:00 to 17:45, before the full Official Singles Chart Top 100 is posted on the Official Charts Company's website. A rival chart show, The Vodafone Big Top 40, is based on iTunes downloads and commercial radio airplay across the Global Radio network only, is broadcast on Sunday afternoons from 16:00 to 19:00 on 145 local commercial radio stations across the United Kingdom; the Big Top 40 is not regarded by the industry or wider media. There is a show called "Official KISS Top 40", counting down 40 most played songs on Kiss FM every Sunday 17:00 to 19:00; the UK Singles Chart began to be compiled in 1952.
According to the Official Charts Company's statistics, as of 1 July 2012, 1,200 singles have topped the UK Singles Chart. The precise number of chart-toppers is debatable due to the profusion of competing charts from the 1950s to the 1980s, but the usual list used is that endorsed by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and subsequently adopted by the Official Charts Company; the company regards a selected period of the New Musical Express chart and the Record Retailer chart from 1960 to 1969 as predecessors for the period prior to 11 February 1969, where multiples of competing charts coexisted side by side. For example, the BBC compiled its own chart based on an average of the music papers of the time; the first number one on the UK Singles Chart was "Here in My Heart" by Al Martino for the week ending date 14 November 1952. As of the week ending date 18 April 2019, the UK Singles Chart has had 1352 different number-one hits; the current number-one single is "Someone You Loved" by Lewis Capaldi.
Before the compilation of sales of records, the music market measured a song's popularity by sales of sheet music. The idea of compiling a chart based on sales originated in the United States, where the music-trade paper Billboard compiled the first chart incorporating sales figures on 20 July 1940. Record charts in the UK began in 1952, when Percy Dickins of the New Musical Express gathered a pool of 52 stores willing to report sales figures. For the first British chart Dickins telephoned 20 shops, asking for a list of the 10 best-selling songs; these results were aggregated into a Top 12 chart published in NME on 14 November 1952, with Al Martino's "Here in My Heart" awarded the number-one position. The chart became a successful feature of the periodical. Record Mirror compiled its own Top 10 chart for 22 January 1955; the NME chart was based on a telephone poll. Both charts expanded in size, with Mirror's becoming a Top 20 in October 1955 and NME's becoming a Top 30 in April 1956. Another rival publication, Melody Maker, began compiling its own chart.
It was the first chart to include Northern Ireland in its sample. Record Mirror began running a Top 5 album chart in July 1956. In March 1960, Record Retailer had a Top 50 singles chart. Although NME had the largest circulation of charts in the 1960s and was followed, in March 1962 Record Mirror stopped compiling its own chart and published Record Retailer's instead. Retailer began independent auditing in January 1963, has been used by the UK Singles Chart as the source for number-ones since the week ending 12 March 1960; the choice of Record Retailer as the source has been criticised. With available lists of which record shops were sampled to compile the charts some shops were subjected to "hyping" but, with Record Retailer being less followed than some charts, it was subject to less hyping. Additionally, Retailer was set up by independent record shops and had no funding or affiliation with record companies. However, it had a smaller sample size than some ri
Hempstead, New York
The Town of Hempstead is one of the three towns in Nassau County, New York, United States, occupying the southwestern part of the county, in the western half of Long Island. Twenty-two incorporated villages are or within the town; the town's combined population was 759,757 at the 2010 census, the majority of the population of the county and by far the largest of any town in New York. If Hempstead were to be incorporated as a city, it would be the second-largest city in New York, behind New York City, it would be the 18th-largest city in the country, behind Charlotte, North Carolina and ahead of Seattle, Washington. Hempstead is the most populous municipality in the New York metropolitan area outside New York City. Hofstra University's main campus is located in Hempstead; the town was first settled around 1644 following the establishment of a treaty between English colonists, John Carman and Robert Fordham, the Lenape Indians in 1643. Although the settlers were from the English colony of Connecticut, a patent was issued by the government of New Netherland after the settlers had purchased land from the local natives.
This transaction is depicted in a mural in the Hempstead Village Hall, reproduced from a poster commemorating the 300th anniversary of Hempstead Village. In local Dutch-language documents of the 1640s and the town was invariably called Heemstede, several of Hempstead's original 50 patentees were Dutch, suggesting that Hempstead was named after the Dutch town and/or castle Heemstede, which are near the cities of Haarlem and Amsterdam. However, the authorities had Dutchified a name given by co-founder John Carman, born in 1606 in Hemel Hempstead, England, on land owned by his ancestors since the 13th century. In 1664, the settlement under the new Province of New York adopted the Duke's Laws, austere statutes that became the basis upon which the laws of many colonies were to be founded. For a time, Hempstead became known as "Old Blue", as a result of the "Blue Laws". During the American Revolution, the Loyalists in the south and the American sympathizers in the north caused a split in 1784 into "North Hempstead" and "South Hempstead".
With the 1898 incorporation of the Borough of Queens as part of the city of New York, the 1899 split of Queens County to create Nassau County, some southwestern portions of the Town of Hempstead seceded from the town and became part of the Borough of Queens. Richard Hewlett, born in Hempstead, served as a Lieutenant Colonel with the British Army under General Oliver De Lancey in the American Revolution. Afterward, Hewlett departed the United States with other Loyalists and settled in the newly created Province of New Brunswick in what became Canada. A settlement there was named Hampstead, in Queen's County next to Long Island in the Saint John River; the town is headed by the Supervisor Laura Gillen of Rockville Centre, the first Democrat to hold the position in over 100 years, the second woman to hold the position. The responsibilities of the office include presiding over meetings of the Town Council and directing the legislative and administrative function of that body; the position entails creating and implementing the town's budget.
Kate Murray was the town's first female supervisor. One famous former supervisor was Republican Alfonse D'Amato, who represented New York in the United States Senate from 1981 to 1999. Prior to 1994, the town had a Presiding Supervisor, who along with the Supervisor, sat on what was Nassau County's main governmental body, the Board of Supervisors, along with the Supervisors of the towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay and the independent cities of Long Beach—formerly a part of Hempstead Town until its incorporation as a separate municipality in 1922—and Glen Cove, carved out of Oyster Bay Town in 1917; the Presiding Supervisor, besides chairing the weekly county Board of Supervisors meetings, acted as the senior official in the town government with the Supervisor in a more junior, subordinate role. Having the Presiding Supervisor on the county board along with the Supervisor gave Hempstead—by far the most populous of the county's three towns and two cities—the most clout on that body. However, in 1993–94, a federal judge ruled that the board's makeup violated the one-person, one-vote constitutional principle and gave no representation to the country's growing minority population.
As a result of that ruling, the Board of Supervisors was replaced by a 19-member county legislature. Gregory P. Peterson served as the last Presiding Supervisor, as the position was abolished with the demise of the county board; the Town Council comprises six voting members, elected from a councilmanic district. Their primary function is to adopt the annual budget and amending the town code and the building zone ordinances, adopting all traffic regulations, hearing applications for changes of zone and special exceptions to zoning codes; as of 2019, the council members are: Dorothy L. Goosby Edward A. Ambrosino Bruce A. Blakeman Anthony P. D'Esposito Erin King Sweeney Dennis Dunne, Sr. Other elected officials in the town include the receiver of taxes; the clerk is responsible for issuing birth and death certificates
Fear of a Black Planet
Fear of a Black Planet is the third studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy. It was released on April 1990, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. For the album, Public Enemy's Bomb Squad production team sought to expand on the dense, sample-layered sound of the group's 1988 record It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Having fulfilled their initial creative ambitions with that album, Public Enemy aspired to create what lead rapper Chuck D called "a deep, complex album", their songwriting was inspired by the controversy surrounding member Professor Griff and his dismissal from the group in 1989. Fear of a Black Planet features elaborate sound collages that incorporate varying rhythms, numerous samples, media sound bites, eccentric loops, reflecting the songs' confrontational tone. Recorded during the golden age of hip hop, its assemblage of reconfigured and recontextualized aural sources preceded the sample clearance system that emerged in the music industry. Fear of a Black Planet explores themes of organization and empowerment within the black community, social issues affecting African Americans, race relations at the time.
The record's criticism of institutional racism, white supremacy, the power elite was inspired by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's views on color. A commercial and critical hit, Fear of a Black Planet sold two million copies in the United States and received rave reviews from critics, many of whom named it one of the year's best albums, its success contributed to the popularity of Afrocentric and political subject matter in hip hop and the genre's mainstream resurgence at the time. Since it has been viewed as one of hip hop's greatest and most important records, as well as being musically and culturally significant. In 2003, Fear of a Black Planet was ranked number 300 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, in 2005, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. In 1988, Public Enemy released their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back to critical and commercial success, their music's dense textures, provided by the group's production team The Bomb Squad, exemplified a new production aesthetic in hip hop.
The controversial, politically charged lyrics by the group's lead rapper Chuck D, whose braggadocio raps contained references to political figures such as Assata Shakur and Nelson Mandela, as well as endorsements of Nation of Islam-leader Louis Farrakhan, intensified the group's affiliation with black nationalism and Farrakhan. It Takes a Nation's success helped raise hip hop's profile as both art and sociopolitical statement, amid media criticism of the genre, it helped give hip hop a critical credibility and standing in the popular music community after it had been dismissed as a fad since its introduction at the turn of the 1980s. In promoting the record, Public Enemy expanded performing dynamic. With the album's content and the group's rage-filled showmanship in concert, they became the vanguard of a movement in hip hop that reflected a new black consciousness and socio-political dynamic that were taking shape in America at the time. In May 1989, Chuck D, Bomb Squad producer Hank Shocklee, publicist Bill Stepheny were negotiating with several labels for a production deal from a major record company, their goal since starting Public Enemy in the early 1980s.
As they were in negotiations, group member Professor Griff made anti-Semitic remarks in an interview with The Washington Times, in which he said that Jews were the cause of "the majority of the wickedness" in the world. Public Enemy received media scrutiny and criticism from religious organizations and liberal rock critics, which added to charges against the group's politics being racist and misogynistic. Amid the controversy, Chuck D was given an ultimatum by Schocklee and Stepheny to dismiss Griff from the group or the production deal would fall through, he fired Griff in June, but he rejoined and has since denied holding anti-Semitic views and apologized for the remarks. Several people who had worked with Public Enemy expressed concern about Chuck D's leadership abilities and role as a social spokesman. Def Jam director of publicity Bill Adler said that the controversy "partly... fueled the writing of ". To follow up It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the group sought to make a more thematically focused work and to condense Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's theory of "Color Confrontation and Racism" into an album-length recording.
According to Chuck D, this involved "telling people, color's an issue created and concocted to take advantage of people of various characteristics with the benefit of a few". He recalled their concept for the album in an interview with Billboard: "We wanted to go with a deep, complex album... more conducive to the high and lows of great stage-performance." Chuck D cited the commercial circumstances for hip hop at the time, having transitioned from a singles to an album medium in the music industry during the 1980s. In an interview for Westword, he said, "We understood the magnitude of what an album was, so we set out to make something that not only epitomized the standard of an album, but would stand the test of time by being diverse with sounds and textures, being able to home in on the aspect of peaks and valleys". Fear of a Black Planet was recorded in sessions held during June to October 1989 at Greene St. Recording in New York City, The Music Palace in West Hempstead, Spectrum City Studios in Hempstead.
It was produced by The Bomb Squad, which included Chuck D, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, brothers Hank and Keith Shocklee. The sessions marked the first time that Keith was credited as a m
Public Enemy (band)
Public Enemy is an American hip hop group consisting of Chuck D, Keith Shocklee, Flavor Flav, Professor Griff, Khari Wynn, DJ Lord, Sammy Sam, the S1W group. Formed in Long Island, New York, in 1986, they are known for their politically charged music and criticism of the American media, with an active interest in the frustrations and concerns of the African American community, their first four albums during the late 1980s and early 1990s were all certified either gold or platinum and were, according to music critic Robert Hilburn in 1998, "the most acclaimed body of work by a hip hop act". Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called them "the most influential and radical band of their time." They were inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Carlton Ridenhour and William Drayton met at Long Island's Adelphi University in the mid-1980s. Developing his talents as an MC with Flav while delivering furniture for his father's business, Chuck D and Spectrum City, as the group was called, released the record "Check Out the Radio", backed by "Lies", a social commentary—both of which would influence RUSH Productions' Run–D.
M. C. and Beastie Boys. Chuck D put out a tape to fend off a local MC who wanted to battle him, he called the tape Public Enemy #1 because he felt like he was being persecuted by people in the local scene. This was the first reference to the notion of a public enemy in any of Chuck D's songs; the single was created by Chuck D with a contribution by Flavor Flav, though this was before the group Public Enemy was assembled. Around 1986, Bill Stephney, the former Program Director at WBAU, was approached by Ali Hafezi and offered a position with the label. Stephney accepted, his first assignment was to help fledgling producer Rick Rubin sign Chuck D, whose song "Public Enemy Number One" Rubin had heard from Andre "Doctor Dré" Brown. According to the book The History of Rap Music by Cookie Lommel, "Stephney thought it was time to mesh the hard-hitting style of Run DMC with politics that addressed black youth. Chuck recruited Spectrum City, which included Hank Shocklee, his brother Keith Shocklee, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, collectively known as the Bomb Squad, to be his production team and added another Spectrum City partner, Professor Griff, to become the group's Minister of Information.
With the addition of Flavor Flav and another local mobile DJ named Terminator X, the group Public Enemy was born." According to Chuck, The S1W, which stands for Security of the First World, "represents that the black man can be just as intelligent as he is strong. It stands for the fact that we're not third-world people, we're first-world people. Hank Shocklee came up with the name Public Enemy based on "underdog love and their developing politics" and the idea from Def Jam staffer Bill Stephney following the Howard Beach racial incident, Bernhard Goetz, the death of Michael Stewart: "The Black man is the public enemy."Public Enemy started out as opening act for the Beastie Boys during the latter's Licensed to Ill popularity, in 1987 released their debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, their debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, was released in 1987 to critical acclaim; the album was the group's first step toward stardom. In October 1987, music critic Simon Reynolds dubbed Public Enemy "a superlative rock band".
They released their second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in 1988, which performed better in the charts than their previous release, included the hit single "Don't Believe the Hype" in addition to "Bring the Noise". Nation of Millions... was the first hip hop album to be voted album of the year in The Village Voice's influential Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In 1989, the group returned to the studio to record Fear of a Black Planet, which continued their politically charged themes; the album was supposed to be released in late 1989, but was pushed back to April 1990. It was the most successful of any of their albums and, in 2005, was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, it included the singles "Welcome To The Terrordome", "911 Is a Joke", which criticized emergency response units for taking longer to arrive at emergencies in the black community than those in the white community, "Fight the Power". "Fight the Power" is regarded as one of the most popular and influential songs in hip hop history.
It was the theme song of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. The group's next release, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black, continued this trend, with songs like "Can't Truss It", which addressed the history of slavery and how the black community can fight back against oppression; the album included the controversial song and video "By the Time I Get to Arizona", which chronicled the black community's frustration that some US states did not recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday. The video featured members of Public Enemy taking out their frustrations on politicians in the states not recognizing the holiday. In 1992, the group was one of the first rap acts to perform at the Reading Festival, in England, headlining the second day of the three-day festival. After a 1994 motorcycle accident shattered his left leg and kept him in the hospital for a full month, Terminator X relocated to his 15-acre farm in Vance County, North Carolina. By 1998, he was ready to retire from the group and focus full-time on raising African black ostriches on his farm.
In late 1998, the group started looking for Terminator X's permanent replacement. Following several months of searching for a DJ, Professor Griff saw DJ Lord at a Vestax Battle and approached
Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black
Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black is the fourth studio album by American hip hop group Public Enemy, released on October 1, 1991, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. The album received critical acclaim, ranking at No. 2 in The Village Voice's 1991 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Apocalypse 91 was recorded at The Mix Palace in Long Island, New York and produced by The Bomb Squad and The Imperial Grand Ministers of Funk, which consisted of producers Stuart Robertz, Cerwin "C-Dawg" Depper, Gary "G-Wiz" Rinaldo, The JBL; the album title refers to the films Apocalypse Now and The Empire Strikes Back. The group would take a new direction with their sound out of necessity. According to Hank Shocklee, around this time, the disks for every track they had been working on for the past four to five years had been stolen; as a result, they had to rush to re-create their music and to put out their album in a timely manner. Shocklee admitted that it was impossible to recover what they had lost, saying "once you lose all your data, it's difficult to get that data back...you may get some of it back, but you'll never get the complete set.
You won't know what the complete set is, because there's data in there you didn't know you had." In retrospect, he believed the loss "stunted growth. We never recovered after that. We was on a roll - I was on a roll, to lose that material set me back so hard." As a result, the sound was a little leaner than the dense production of their previous albums, live musicians became a prominent element as well. The group recorded "1 Million Bottlebags" to protest the pervasiveness of malt liquor in the African-American community. Public Enemy collaborated with the metal band Anthrax to record a thrash version of their earlier hit "Bring the Noise"; the album was released on October 1991, by Def Jam Recordings and Columbia Records. The album peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 chart and at No. 1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On November 26, 1991, Apocalypse 91 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of one million copies in the United States. Apocalypse 91 produced four singles: "Can't Truss It", "Night Train", "Shut'Em Down" and its B-side "By the Time I Get to Arizona".
The latter featured a controversial music video where Public Enemy was depicted killing the 17th Governor of Arizona, Evan Mecham, who refused to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday. "Can't Truss It" was Public Enemy's most successful single, peaking at No. 9 on the Hot Soul Singles chart and at No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song peaked at No. 5 on the Dance chart, becoming their most successful release there. Upon release, Apocalypse 91 earned critical acclaim. Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone praised its production and lyrics, stating that Apocalypse 91 "attempts nothing short of setting a sociopolitical agenda for the black community." Ronin Ro of The Source highlighted Chuck D's powerful and focused lyrics as well as the uncompromising and raw nature of the album. NME credited the album for being "more soulful" and funkier than its predecessors, but admitted that it includes some filler. In Playboy, prominent critic Robert Christgau highlighted the first half of the album, calling it "Public Enemy's most exciting sustained sequence ever", but criticized the second half for being less consistent."Apocalypse'91 is great rather than classic because you can't make four classic albums in a row…" observed the hip-hop fanzine Louder Than A Bomb!.
"PE are still the best band in America and they've once again made the best album of the year."Apocalypse 91 was ranked at No. 2 in The Village Voice's 1991 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, behind Nirvana's Nevermind, while editors of Spin ranked it 7th in their list of 20 Best Albums of the Year. Retrospectively, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine cites the album as one of the great records of golden age hip hop; the record was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. All tracks written by Carlton Ridenhour, Stuart Robertz, Gary "G-Wiz" Rinaldo, Cerwin "C-Dawg" Depper unless otherwise noted. Public EnemyChuck D Flavor Flav Terminator XAdditional personnelAnthrax – performer Frank Abel – keyboards Fred Wells – guitar Lorenzo "Tony" Wyche – horns Allen Givens – horns Ricky Gordon – percussion Tyrone Jefferson – horns Al MacDowell – bass guitar Steve Moss – percussion Michael Angelo – mixing Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black at Discogs
Chuck D
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, known professionally as Chuck D, is an American rapper and producer. As the leader of the rap group Public Enemy, he helped create politically and conscious hip hop music in the mid-1980s; the Source ranked him at No. 12 on their list of the Top 50 Hip-Hop Lyricists of All Time. Ridenhour was born in New York, he began writing rhymes after the New York City blackout of 1977. After graduating from Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School, he went to Adelphi University on Long Island to study graphic design, where he met William Drayton, he received a B. F. A. from Adelphi in 1984 and received an honorary doctorate from Adelphi in 2013. While at Adelphi, Ridenhour co-hosted hip hop radio show the Super Spectrum Mix Hour as Chuck D on Saturday nights at Long Island rock radio station WLIR, designed flyers for local hip-hop events, drew a cartoon called Tales of the Skind for Adelphi student newspaper The Delphian. Upon hearing Ridenhour's demo track "Public Enemy Number One", fledgling producer/upcoming music-mogul Rick Rubin insisted on signing him to his Def Jam label.
Their major label albums were Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet, Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black, Greatest Misses, Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age, they released a full-length album soundtrack for the film He Got Game in 1998. Ridenhour contributed to several episodes of the PBS documentary series The Blues, he has appeared as a featured artist on many other songs and albums, having collaborated with artists such as Janet Jackson, Kool Moe Dee, The Dope Poet Society, Run–D. M. C. Ice Cube, Boom Boom Satellites, Rage Against the Machine, John Mellencamp and many others. In 1990, he appeared on "Kool Thing", a song by the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, along with Flavor Flav, he sang on George Clinton's song "Tweakin'", which appears on his 1989 album The Cinderella Theory. In 1993, he executive produced Got'Em Running Scared, an album by Ichiban Records group Chief Groovy Loo and the Chosen Tribe. In 1996, Ridenhour released Autobiography of Mistachuck on Mercury Records.
Chuck D made a rare appearance at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, presenting the Video Vanguard Award to the Beastie Boys, whilst commending their musicianship. In November 1998, he settled out of court with Christopher "The Notorious B. I. G." Wallace's estate over the latter's sampling of his voice in the song "Ten Crack Commandments". The specific sampling is Ridenhour counting off the numbers one to nine on the track "Shut'Em Down", he described the decision to sue as "stupid."In September 1999, he launched a multi-format "supersite" on the web site Rapstation.com. A home for the vast global hip hop community, the site boasts a TV and radio station with original programming, many of hip hop's most prominent DJs, celebrity interviews, free MP3 downloads, downloadable ringtones by ToneThis, social commentary, current events, regular features on turning rap careers into a viable living. Since 2000, he has been one of the most vocal supporters of peer-to-peer file sharing in the music industry.
He loaned his voice to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as DJ Forth Right MC for the radio station Playback FM. In 2000, he collaborated with Public Enemy's Gary G-Whiz and MC Lyte on the theme music to the television show Dark Angel, he appeared with Henry Rollins in a cover of Black Flag's "Rise Above" for the album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three. He was featured on Z-Trip's album Shifting Gears on a track called "Shock and Awe". In 2008 he contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky, turned up on The Go! Team's album Proof of Youth on the track "Flashlight Fight." He fulfilled his childhood dreams of being a sports announcer by performing the play-by-play commentary in the video game NBA Ballers: Chosen One on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In 2009, Ridenhour wrote the foreword to the book The Love Ethic: The Reason Why You Can't Find and Keep Beautiful Black Love by Kamau and Akilah Butler.
He appeared on Brother Ali's album, Us. In March 2011, Chuck D re-recorded vocals with The Dillinger Escape Plan for a cover of "Fight the Power". Chuck D duetted with Rock singer Meat Loaf on his 2011 album Hell in a Handbasket on the song "Mad Mad World/The Good God Is a Woman and She Don't Like Ugly". In 2016 Chuck D joined the band Prophets of Rage along with B-Real and former members of Rage Against the Machine. Chuck D is known for his powerful rapping voice - How to Rap says, "Chuck D of Public Enemy has a powerful, resonant voice, acclaimed as one of the most distinct and impressive in hip-hop". Chuck D says this was based on listening to sportscasters such as Marv Albert. Chuck D comes up with a title for a song first and that he writes on paper, though he sometimes edits using a computer, he prefers to not punch in vocals, he prefers to not overdub vocals. Ridenhour is politically active, he continues to be an activist, publisher and producer. Addressing the negative views associated with rap music, he co-wrote the essay book Fight the Power: Rap and Reality, along with Yusuf Jah.
He argues that "music and art and culture is escapism, escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality", but sometimes t
